There are a handful of times when I wish my first thought about a campaign or candidate was not, “Hey I wonder how they feel about my rights?” I had one of those moments today.

A Supreme Court Justice candidate in Michigan is the sister of an actress from the West Wing. She managed to pull the key characters together to film a campaign video, and I hate to admit that it’s pretty funny – likely because it’s pretty light on politics and name dropping.

I loved the West Wing. I especially loved Ainsley Hayes who was a conservative alumna from an all women’s college in New England. It really was an enjoyable show, even given the obvious bias in the politics.

So, yes, I admit that with this video, it would kind of be tempting to be a low information voter. Fortunately, I don’t live in Michigan. I also can’t break myself of the habit of trying to find out more about actual candidate positions. (Hell, I even asked someone from Michigan if NRA usually grades in these races, but they said they didn’t think so. If you’re a Michigan voter, check the grades that should be posted soon to be sure!) Of course, I also doubt that if I was a low information voter that I would have watched West Wing at all or found any humor in the video.

3 Responses to “Oh, To Be a Low Information Voter”

They definitely had their moments for people on both sides. While the guy making the argument is a rich liberal in this clip, it was actually nice to see him drop a few reality checks on other liberals who were attacking prosperity as a whole. There were quite a few lines that could teach the GOP a few things, too. I thought it was pretty good because of how they weighed policy vs. politics vs. voters. I really wasn’t sure how I felt about who won the election in the final season, but that’s partly because it all had to be scrapped at the last second and they completely changed the storyline.

Give me five minutes with a video editor to strip out the fairly small amount of focused campaigning, and you’d have a darned good PSA reminding people to look for the non-partisan section of their ballots…. (And WTH, props to the candidate for Judge, who spent at least as much time hammering home that there was a whole easy-to-miss section of the ballot as she did touting her candidacy.)

That was the good side of the West Wing; while it was often painfully partisan — and/or painfully trying to retcon a misstep by Mr. Clinton’s administration — by golly, they could do a nice job of showing how things work (or are supposed to) in the fed.gov.